Hi All.

Here is a csv of visual reporting points in the USA taken from SkyVector.

Regards.
Pontius.

I.ve just found some more too:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/jog/

Hi All.

I've recently come across these two pages:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/tpc/
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/onc/

They contain a set of back issue aviation charts produced by the US department of defense and cover most of the the world.

They can be downloaded as jpegs and as a result there can be no copying and pasting co-ordinates to use in another piece of software. But still it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Regards.
Pontius.

Right. It seems that you have to remove the mapbox://styles/ from the style URL to get the id.

Thanks. It's working now.
Pontius.

Hi pbhead.

Are you using Mapbox?

Apparently there have been recent changes to mapbox that can play up with Plan-G v3.1.3.

I'm getting the same problem regardless of the version of Plan-G that I use. So I've reverted to OpenCycleMap.

regards.
Pontius.

Hi All.

I've created a map in Mapbox, but I get a 401 error if I attempt to access it from either Plan-G 3.1.3 or 3.1.4.

I've been to https://www.mapbox.com/studio/classic/projects/ and there's nothing there.

I've managed to find the access key, but I can't find any Mapbox ID anywhere even though I've searched the Mapbox Studio high and low. All I can find is a style URL which is something like:

mapbox://styles/myusername/load-of-gibberish

So is the style URL the same as the ID? And if not how do I get an ID?

I'm getting a bit confused by this.

regards.
Pontius.

Hi All.

There seems to be to have been some disquiet regarding the base map recently. In particular the complaints I have seen appear to surround the level of detail available on OpenCycleMap.

I came across this site the other day:

https://www.openaip.net/

As far as I can tell, the base map appears to be this: https://www.thunderforest.com/maps/landscape/. This map appears to me to be both very clear and very detailed. In particular, the purple cycle routed that make parts of Germany and almost all of The Netherlands unusable are not there.

As Thunderforest are the same people that produce OpenCycleMap, is it possible, or could it be possible in the future, to use this map with Plan-G?

Regards.
Pontius.

In the past couple of weeks, I've become more cautious about adding permanent waypoints, because I've come to doubt that I'll use many of them. And because they are fixed they tend to be rigid, especially in mountainous terrain. They can be fine for one flight plan but in a slightly awkward place for another.

I've also noticed that if I create a flight plan using SkyVector, all waypoints that have no identifier in the map are simply entered as 'GPS' and no description. As these are suitable to be submitted to the FAA, I'm beginning to think that doing any more probably is faffing about unnecessarily. The only qualification I would add to that adding a place name in the description that matches a place named on the base map, makes editing easier in the future. But I'm still not certain whether this will be woth the effort in the long run.

But I've noticed that the temporary waypoint names can get out of order and I a lot of the time, I've been editing identifiers and descriptions into my flight plans to rectify this.

I've often thought to ask if there is any way to get plan-p to re number them, but never got round to it. Even better, is there a way to get plan-g to re number them in reverse order? I use a tablet based moving map and if the waypoints appeared to count down to the end, I would have a rough idea how far I am from the end of the flight.

But I don't know if this is possible.

Regards.
Pontius.

Hi All.

What do most people do regarding naming waypoints? I'm asking this because I think I'm getting myself into a bit of a mess at the moment.

Some time ago, I set about adding a lot of user waypoints to plan-g which might be useful for  flight planning. The idea was that, in future, I would create flight plans simply be joining the fixed waypoints and I wouldn't have to rename ant 'wpt' waypoints. I've now got about 5500 waypoints in Western North America and I still have to resort to using temporary waypoints.

Firstly, I worked from lists of mountains, lakes and other landmarks downloaded from the internet and then later, I worked by comparing different maps to see if I could identify useful landmarks that way. Finally, I started working through all my flight plans and adding waypoints to the database that way. Whilst I was doing this, I also set about re naming all the generic 'wpt' waypoints in my flight plans to use specific identifiers and place names.

I've finished all of my flight plans in British Columbia and I'm beginning to wonder whether this is a good idea. This has become so slow and laborious that I'm getting to the point where I sometimes can't face looking at plan-g any more. Even in some parts of Europe (i.e remote parts of the Alps), there might be no places named on the base map and in some cases this will also be missing from Google maps and Bing maps too. In many parts of British Collumbia this is even more common. Even Toporama (a map made by the Canadian Government) there can be large areas where the map only displays contours, unnamed streams, unnamed roads and nothing else.

So would anyone else consider adding large numbers of waypoints to the database just in case they might be usefull in a future flightplan? And do any of you explicitly re name temporary waypoints or do you consider it best just to leave them as they are?

I've posted this for guidance because I wonder whether I'm turning flight planning into unnecessary hard work.

Regards.
Pontius.

Hi All.

This is a flight along the Klinaklini valley in British Columbia.

I usually fly it at about 6500 ft although sometimes I think it ought to be higher.

Regards.
Pontius

Ok.

Thanks.
Pontius.

Hi All.

I've found these on what appears to be a live aviation forum, so I presume they are correct.

Regards.
Pontius.

Hi.

I've found the NOAA DEM model to be inaccurate. So, as I fly a lot in British Columbia where ground elevation can be critical, I've returned to estimating elevations myself.

I've noticed though that I can only add an elevation to a waypoint when I create it. I can edit the elevation after the waypoint has been added to the database, but the edited value is not saved.

Is this a known issue or am I doing something wrong?

Regards.
Pontius.

... so it's decided.

It's to be Plan-G.

I live in England, where I tend to fly a flock of old warbirds and might attempt a little aerobatics. I stray into Wales occasionally where I do much the same thing.

But my other haunts are Scotland, Western North America (NorCal to Alaska), Austria, Italy and the Balkans. In other words I also like a bit of mountain flying. This became problematic when MapQuest pulled the plug because Open Streetmap has no indication of relief. As a result, I was left having to compare SkyVector, Google Maps and OSM to try to pick out mountain passes that could be represented on OSM using user waypoints. As you can imagine, it was taking hours to complete a flight plan.

So I began to look for alternatives.

Well, there aint much choice. EFASS was the only contender. So I gave it a go. And another go. And another... Until this morning I nearly lost my temper with it.

But then I found that there is relief data on Open Cycle Maps! My bacon has been saved!

So from now on I'll be planning flights using Plan-G and Open Cycle Maps, along with SkyVector to get a little more detail on ground elevations.

So having erred and strayed in the wilderness for a few weeks, I've come back to Plan-G, as far as I can see, for good.

Regards.

Pontius.